This is a good idea. One thing missing from MAID appears to be a determined marketing strategy. I know and appreciate that Dave and the Devs want to focus on on building the product however I wonder if they should also allocate some btc towards marketing.

@Minecache There has been a small trickle of marketing by Maidsafe. If just that to do a lot of marketing too early is to make people numb to SAFE since they get excited and then see no live network so they mostly turn away from future SAFE. The best time to do marketing is when we have a (near) live network with great APPs to market.

Also personally I feel SAFE will be like the original internet and the marketing will be of the great APPs and a small amount for SAFE itself.

Now is the time for preparation, getting the marketing mechanism ready when in a year or whatever SAFE enters the release candidate stages and there are some great APPs

The interesting things and most promising is that MAID is still above 10K at this time. It still has a lot of credibility in the crypto world.

I agree and in fact it’s a topic of recent discussions in the office. Not so much price, but it is a bell-weather of sorts. The biggest issue we have in my opinion at the moment is we have not made it clear what we are doing. Creating a secure autonomous network is huge, it has probably world changing potential for many industries, changes security paradigms, ownership paradigms and just simply has never been done. It’s a mammoth task and we have not vocalised this enough. We are going to change that though.

As we don’t describe “the impossible network” or really explain what a secured autonomous network is then people think, oh it’s like sia or storj, tor, ipfs, bittorrent etc. and that’s a shame, It’s also our fault. Many of these projects are terrific, I don’t judge them publicly (as that is not my job). Just yesterday we were talking about this and I think we did this to ourselves. We got caught up in the decentralised story, a decentralised network, to us meant secure autonomous, self authenticating, self healing anonymous network. Then many others start with federated servers or known ip location services or just ignore security to start with etc. and say they are decentralised, while true, it’s not what we meant.

So we will now start to differentiate ourselves and make it clear, we are talking about a very different network here. A network of unknown nodes (not hosted servers, but home computers) that are securely rewarded to provide services for people. A network that ensures data sharing and publishing is secure and persistent. A network where nodes run and configure themselves without human intervention past running a program. A network that calculates price of the service to the users dynamically and at the lowest possible cost, in perpetuity. A network that …

We need to get out of the “me to” decentralised network chatter, our vision and network gets lost there and it does deflate us when some comparisons to some other networks are made. It’s like taking a skin on top of an app and calling it a decentralised network makes a competing product to us, it does not ! ( I am not trying to dis any project here). Or using a public ledger to store data is the same as us, it’s not. Or having nodes identifiable or controlled by humans is like us, it could not be further from the case for us.

So we will make the differentiation clearly as we move on, especially as we can prove claims much more easily when we are at alpha 3, This is another issue we face though, proof through showing the products or tests, rather than white paper == product == amazing, mentality that we sometimes see in this space. I don’t see us changing much there mind you, demonstrations are great and kill so much FUD, we will probably keep on that path, but we will need to let folk know the path we are actually on.

One problem with this, is not having home vaults right now. Until they are out in the wild again, the network is pretty centralised. I am sure everyone here understands the challenges and the reasoning, but outsiders will not be so sympathetic.

I do think people fall for the first mover advantage stuff though. While first mover can be important, being popular is not required for safe net to succeed. It does not require the network affect and the target space cannot be easily monopolised. Others getting out simple solutions to part of the problem may get the lime light in the short term, but it won’t prevent safe net from becoming useful/popular in the longer term.

Finally, other projects are hyping white papers up to the max. Maidsafe don’t do this, despite having tangible software to back up the claims. Maybe alpha 2 needs some fan fair to let people know the project is still making progress?

Maybe alpha 2 needs some fan fair to let people know the project is still making progress?

Alpha 2 is not going to be much different to these last couple of testnets. I’d say alpha 3 with home vaults (IIRC) will be the one to make some noise about. Alpha 2 will still be “centralised” vaults, but the APPs certainly can make some noise when alpha 2 is running.

So we will now start to differentiate ourselves and make it clear, we are talking about a very different network here. A network of unknown nodes (not hosted servers, but home computers) that are securely rewarded to provide services for people. A network that ensures data sharing and publishing is secure and persistent. A network where nodes run and configure themselves without human intervention past running a program. A network that calculates price of the service to the users dynamically and at the lowest possible cost, in perpetuity. A network that …

Any ideas yet on how you are going to do this? Via the maidsafe.net site? or blogs? or press releases? or series of topics here? or …? Obviously I realise you may not yet know how, but just in case you do, I ask.

Alpha 3 will be the secured autonomous network. so routing nodes from home for anyone to attack. We may even offer rewards to attack that, but it will not have data (i.e. not a vault), that’s alpha 4 (not a huge step). Alpha 2 is a huge deal, the work is massive and the team have done amazing things, but it is mimicking the current Internet to an extent. So we are playing into the feed a tesla car hay type thing there to. We also need to get that right. It’s more like, “of course you can do what the Internet does” and if you ignore the power of this then it might even feel like just the Internet. It’s really much more than that, but alpha 3/4 need to back that up. So we need Alpha 2 for mutable data, dynamic apps/sites and more, but there is a much bigger thing in the background that will run this. Some apps will show the capability of what the Internet cannot currently do, and that will be where we all start to think, oh! A bit like the message in an earlier testnet that sent a private key of a bitcoin wallet, simple, but said a lot.

@viv had a great description of this when he said, "it’s like we are building a quantum computer that will tackle previously impossible tasks but it seems for people to understand it then it has to be able to run minesweeper first " I think that says a lot actually.

So its a mammoth task and just cannot all be done at once, I wish it could, but yes I do get your point, if folk can accuse or find a reason to doubt they will (probably correctly), regardless. This is the dichotomy I think the industry has, rather than demonstrating progress (so not finished) there is sometimes more belief in papers and chatter. So we are in a strange place where we demonstrate progress, but the remaining part is the Achilles heel, however if we demonstrated no progress (so did not start) but chatted about it and published loads of papers shouting about them and wrote a ton of almost related clever blog posts it would be seen as world changing Kinda weird, but true. Interesting adjunct

IMHO, it’s such a big, difficult thing to explain that it takes a ton of papers (which we do have) and nobody will read them all, even some of our devs have not, but then folk tell us they don’t exist. We do need to improve communications a lot though, for sure.

TL;DR, Our communications needs to drastically improve, not move into hype, but clearly define SAFE and where we are right now, which is actually a terrific place for us in house anyway (we are in a great place design wise, just implementation design and speed that annoys us)

Any ideas yet on how you are going to do this? Via the maidsafe.net site? or blogs? or press releases? or series of topics here? or …? Obviously I realise you may not yet know how, but just in case you do, I ask.

Not sure really Rob, I think it will be a mix of many of these, but planned more than usual and some of us taking the time to speak with journalists etc. We, or me for sure, spend so much time rejecting approaches from so many people for so many project ideas and things it makes you a bit insular, but we need to reach out to industry commentators and beyond to relay the correct pitch. However we will have our usual, not too soon approach So we need to get better, but not mental or knee jerk. We have a PR company and the guy there is really amazing. So we have the capability to do this when we want, we just need to pitch it perfectly and with the correct levels of excitement linked with launches/tests etc. So rather than us just releasing a testnet/alpha/beta we should make sure it’s seen by as many as possible. Then I think we all benefit from increased participation and better tests as well.

[EDIT sorry folks, I think I might be derailing this thread, happy if it’s moved in any case]

The biggest issue we have in my opinion at the moment is we have not made it clear what we are doing.

Very pleased to hear you say this. Hire a professional to help with this. All respect intended, and I truly mean that, so far this is a big fail for you and accounts for a lot of the reason MaidSafe gets overlooked, and will continue to get overlooked.

You have tremendous talent David, but it’s not in this department.

18 hours a day,. 7 days a week, 365 days a year for 12 years can cause a little tunnel vision.

So we will now start to differentiate ourselves and make it clear, we are talking about a very different network here.

Yes, even though “Build it and they will come” is true for the Safe Network if you wait long enough, the movement will need some marketing pizzazz in the beginning to really take off. Not too early to think about hiring a marketing wiz who can simplify the concept, package it for mass adoption and propel the project forward.

IMHO, it’s such a big, difficult thing to explain that it takes a ton of papers (which we do have) and nobody will read them all, even some of our devs have not, but then folk tell us they don’t exist. We do need to improve communications a lot though, for sure.

TL;DR, Our communications needs to drastically improve, not move into hype, but clearly define SAFE and where we are right now, which is actually a terrific place for us in house anyway (we are in a great place design wise, just implementation design and speed that annoys us)

I could attest to this! I am new to the crypto world and have a basic understanding of computers, networks, internet, etc… But, I am considered the goto “computer guy” for my family and close friends. I still have a hard time grasping the full features that make SAFE an amazing venture, even after reading about this for months. I have tried to explain this to some of my coworkers and they don’t understand what i am talking about. I can’t discuss this to most of my family because they don’t have a clue. IMHO - I think educating people is going to be the main challenge. As dirvine said “difficult thing to explain that it takes a ton of papers (which we do have) and nobody will read them all”, but even if people did read them, I don’t think the general public would really understand. So, how do we transfer knowledge/educate folks to understand this. Obviously, a fully functional SAFE platform would be great. Marketing would be great. Marketing strategy with release of test nets, great. But, I think the educational aspect could start immediately and have significant benefits. This will take some effort to create, maybe stuff already exists (if so I have not seen it). This would also help to differentiate SAFE from others. If folks think it is worth it and it does not already exist, I could take a stab at making a clean “1 pager” to highlight the differences…

I am a little bit sceptical about that. Reading is not the strenght of people these days. The best thing in my opinion would be, if you spread videos (Youtube). Videos which explain the safenetwork in a really simple and clear way so people can follow easily. The real challenge is to explain the complex things about Safenetwork to normal people. With normal people I mean people with a understanding of how to turn a computer on and how to browse through the internet, if you know what I mean.

Why not cover all mediums. Promo vids, easy reads, info graphics are a favorite as well. I think a lot can be learned from the Dash and Pivx communities and how well they manage to market themselves. It’s not really our flavor I know but always looks sleek and consistent and is always on social media and in plain site.

I really liked one pivx did recently where people from all over the world would receive piv for posting a pic of them with the app open with a QR code visible. Was just neat seeing all the faces and how far and wide it seemingly has spread.